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Some of society’s most notable figures throughout history have sported beards. Aristotle, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Brian Blessed and Mr T are to name a few, and a couple years back I decided to grow my own.

The thought of using a PQQ, RFI, RFP, ITT or tender process to procure services may seem like a trip down a precariously long and winding road for some organisations, however this needn’t be the case if the process is handled the right way. Nor should it put off potential suppliers from putting themselves forward – in fact, when run correctly, tendering provides clarity of the needs of the client, clear deadlines on the availability of information and how each stage of the process will work.

Tenders, in some markets are crucial. Crucial because the sector dictates that a formal tender process is mandatory for any goods and services over a set threshold (e.g. public sector), and equally so in other sectors that run a formal procurement process to ensure best practice and provide a fully auditable selection process.

In fact, in order to win that elusive five year deal it is inevitable that supplying organisations will at some point have to get involved in a PQQ, RFI, RFP or tender type process.

Outsourcing is about expertise – if there are people outside of the business with better knowledge than internally then the value is there to outsource. Defining and measuring this value is crucial to its success. Some large scale outsourcing contracts simply haven’t delivered the anticipated value that was set out at the beginning and there is criticism that these gargantuan contracts are not nimble enough to keep up with organisations that need to constantly change and reinvent their business practises in order to stay afloat in a fragile economy.

Typically, negotiating a deal with a software supplier can be broken down into three stages: preparation, negotiating the contract and evaluating whether it was indeed a good deal. It is the last of these stages that tends to be the most difficult.

Outsourcing services is a common aspect of most business strategies, whether it is to save costs, streamline, or take advantage of external skills and resource that don’t exist in the organisation, many businesses now see it as a mainstream standard business practise.

There is still a decision to be made, however, on whether to opt for an outsource provider based in the UK (near shore) or whether to go further afield. There is often a perception that outsourcing automatically means offshoring, despite many outsourced services being provided in the originating country.

Benchmarking reduces the price of long term ongoing outsourcing deals and ensures that contracts remain cost-effective and efficient in the fast paced technological world in which we live.

Data Centre investment and usage is set to continue to grow in the UK despite the slow growth faced by other parts of the economy according to recent research.

The UK is already one of the largest markets for Data Centres and related Data Centre Services such as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and Cloud Computing Solutions.

Based on power consumption, there are currently an approximate 2 million equipment racks active in the UK but that number looks set to rise further according to research.

Any major outsourcing agreement is an upheaval and anyone entering into it who thinks otherwise is being naive! There is a bedding down period, then BAU (Business As Usual) and then the improvement opportunities arise. Will the incumbent come to you offering better SLAs and cost reductions? Obviously not, as doing so would make their life harder and erode their margins. However, both are achievable if the correct partner is selected in the correct manner and the contracts are drawn up in a suitable way. Here at exceeding we assist organisations achieve this.

1. Is management fully committed to moving ahead provided you can provide a compelling business case?
If not, how can they be or is the project a non-starter?

2. Is your organisation truly ready to accommodate a third party service provider?
If your organisation is not ready, can you leverage the right change management techniques to enable this.